Journals

Blue Dog asked about our journals, and as I've been using my brand new digital camera, and experimenting, and struggling, and trying, and giving up, and coming back to trying, and finally SUCCEEDED in figuring how to upload photos, here is a photo of a bunch of my journals. The black-covered notebooks on the left are my Morning Pages notebooks. When I first did MPs I used loose leaf paper and stuck them in a file folder, adding a shiny bird or fish sticker to the folder-cover for each day's pages, but over the past couple of years, these are the notebooks I use. they are very plain, 320-page books with narrow lines.

Beside those, there are a stack of smaller notebooks - my Gratitude Journals, in which I write Ten Things for which I am Grateful each night. I'm now on my 6th notebook. I repeat my gratitudes frequently, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Lately, this community of AW bloggers features quite often!

The notebooks on the right have shiny or shimmery covers, usually spiral-bound, and are my poetry/writing journals, my day-to-day writing books, that come to workshops or groups with me, that I jot ideas in, play around with words. There should be a couple more in that stack, but they are on the missing-list at the moment. There are a lot of possible places in my house they could be!

At the front, the three slightly fancier-looking notebooks are my Artist's Way or Creativity journals, where I do the exercises or tasks from AW or other creativity programs, write an annual Review of the Year around the time of my birthday, record plans and goals, or journal about issues specifically about creative projects.

After I'd taken the photo, I realise there are a few other notebooks that should be there. A sketchbook or two, a book I carried for a few months, sticking in tickets, found objects, making notes, more visual than most of these, and the notebook that I bought near the end of the '98 Artist Way, to record dreams and wishes.

Lot of paper... lot of ink... lot of dreams. I'm a bit embarrassed that they aren't on the whole very attractive. - The yellow creativity notebook I did decorate with cut-out flowers, and I quite like the look of that, but when I've seen the beautiful collaged covers some people put on their journals, these look very boring, but they are like comfortable cardigans, friends and companions to me. They don't need to look fancy on the outside. On the inside, they have taken my shape, and fit me.